The Market for Kidneys, Livers and Lungs

It already exists, but unwise laws push it dangerously underground.

By

Sally Satel

November 8, 2011

Last month, Levy Itzhak Rosenbaum, a 60-year-old Israeli who made his home in Brooklyn, pleaded guilty in federal court to illegally brokering kidney sales. Between 2006 and 2009, he arranged transplants for three New Jersey patients with renal failure. The donors, poor Israelis, were flown to the U.S. The surgeries took place at American hospitals where doctors had no knowledge that each patient had paid Rosenbaum about $160,000.

Rosenbaum is the first person convicted for violating the 1984 National Organ Transplant Act...